“A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it up and makes it again.” A quote by French director and scriptwriter Jean Renoir that resonates with past and present filmmakers. We’ve seen it many times with Spielberg and his parents’ divorce bleeding into his work from his early sci fi flicks to recently a full autobiographical film. Other times the meaning is more literal with filmmakers like Roland Emmerich who makes big, slightly silly disaster films one after the other simply changing the type of the cataclysm from alien invasion to freezing superstorm. Paweł Pawlikowski is no exception as his films consistently tackle themes such migration, displacement, and border check-points, mirroring his own transnational journeys. Throughout his cinematic career, he has examined the complexity of belonging, often focusing on the loss or absence of home and the longing for a place to call one’s own.
“Fatherland” is yet another addition to Pawlikowski’s repertoire of stunningly shot in black and white road trip films, following “Ida”, which back in 2015 earned Poland’s first Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Road trip not in the Hollywood sense of comedies with beautiful landscapes, unexpected detours, tension between passengers leading to hilarious situations, but rather as a painful inner journey towards self-discovery, confronting the past and the political forces that shape one’s identity and understanding of their origins. This time Pawlikowski brings us back to 1949 in divided Germany where Nobel-prize winner and one of Germany’s most important literary figures Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) is freshly back “home” from his exile in the States to receive a Goethe Prize for his literary achievements. He’s accompanied by his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller), actress/writer and occasional rally driver, as they embark on a road trip in a black Buick across the border from the Allied-occupied Frankfurt to Soviet-controlled Weimar.
The film opens with the Mann siblings on the phone. Erika is calling from a modernist residence with the Santa Monica mountains at the backdrop – Thomas Mann’s escapism lair during the events of the Second World War. Klaus is on the other side of the world, in Cannes, France, smoking in between messy bedsheets with his partners’ but cheeks in the background. The film’s emotional poignancy is established from this very first interaction. The dialogue is sparse and restrained, almost cold, yet beneath this apparent distance, an immediate sense of intimacy emerges. Their closeness is palpable despite the many kilometres that separate them. And yet, this mutual dependance is complicated by an underlying sense of alienation; they remain deeply connected to one another, but there is also a distance between them that words seem unable to bridge.
The themes of liminal space and alienation are intrinsically intertwined with the film’s narrative and exploration of ideological division and loss of national belonging. Having spent sixteen years in exile, Thomas returns to a homeland that is geographically recognisable yet politically and morally estranged from the one he left behind. The glamour and lushness of the interior of the hotel Metropol in Frankfurt clashes with the ruined buildings, abandoned houses and streets covered under debris. As Thomas and Erika drive towards the border, the trees and landscapes remain unchanged, the countryside continuing seamlessly across the divide. Only the checkpoint marks the transition between two worlds. Germany itself becomes a liminal space, a country suspended between its traumatic past and an uncertain future, caught between opposing political systems, with neither ideology capable of restoring a coherent sense of national identity. The Fatherland appears to have been reduced to little more than a decorative wrapping for American vs. Russian, its underlying identity obscured by the competing ideologies imposed upon it. This division is further reflected in the rigid binaries through which the characters are expected to understand the world: either capitalism or communism, either East or West. In Frankfurt about his potential visit to Weimar in East Germany Thomas Mann argues that his visit makes perfect sense since Goethe himself was from Weimar and art should know no borders, adding: “I know no zones. My visit is to Germany itself, Germany as a whole, and to no occupation zone.”
Yet, the film’s characters exist within the very space these binaries fail to account for, suspended between identities, allegiances and places they can no longer fully claim. This sense of displacement is particularly poignant in the fractured relationship between Thomas and his children, whose personal distance mirrors the wider disintegration of the nation. Pawlikowski once again collaborates with cinematographer Łukasz Żal (The Zone of Interest, Hamnet) who stays true to his style with his very tableaux-inspired profound use of static, minimal, yet visually rich compositions. The production design by Marcel Slawinski and Katarzyna Sobanska successfully manages to portray the nuances between the division with the period restoration that gives the audience that sense of desolation. The costume design also captures the ambiance from the uniform of the kids in the Young Pioneers to the table cloths in East German restaurants.
The film’s greatest strength lies in its subtle lead performances, particularly Sandra Hüller’s portrayal of Erika and the quiet intensity of Hanns Zischler as Thomas. In fact, 2026 is very much Sandra Hüller’s year, starting with her Silver Bear Best Actress win in Berlin in February for Markus Schleinzer’s Rose to her scene-stealing karaoke cover of Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times” in “Project Hail Mary” and a speculation for a double Oscar nomination next year. Both Hüller and Zischler convey a profound stoicism, their composed exteriors concealing an emotional volatility that feels like a ticking time bomb, perpetually on the verge of eruption. August Diehl has a very limited screen time as Klaus, but he’s more present in his absence, haunting both Thomas and Erika.
Even the hinted-at tension surrounding Erika’s sexuality remains largely unspoken, communicated instead through stolen looks across the hall and brief brushing of a hand. This same sense of something brewing beneath the surface permeates the landscapes and ruins they encounter, as both characters struggle with their inability to control the political world around them or the personal tragedies that shape their lives like Klaus’ sudden death. This helplessness becomes particularly acute when a man appears at their hotel room, pleading with Thomas to denounce the Soviet authorities’ detention of political prisoners at Buchenwald, only to be led away as he speaks. Hüller and Zischler masterfully portray this quiet frustration that despite their cultural prestige and social standing, Thomas and Erika remain powerless spectators, unable to intervene or protect those who turn to them for help. Fatherland is very compact with 82 min running time, far away from ever being called a biopic, offering just a fragment of Mann’s life. Although, the film at first might appear slightly reticent, it thaws as the audience is exposed more and more to a fatherland surviving only in fragments, scattered between different uniforms, ruined buildings and destroyed homes, that no longer belongs to its people. Just as Erika encounters the ghost of Klaus in the church and Thomas sees him again during his speech in Weimar, Germany itself seems haunted by the ghosts of its past and present, unable to escape the weight of its history. As Erika asks, “Let’s go home, Papa,” Thomas’s reply, “Where’s that?”. Yet the closing scene, with Thomas and Erika seated among the ruins of church, looking up towards a surviving organ being played, offers a fragile glimmer of hope. While Thomas remains weighed down by the past with his eyes fixated on his shoes, Erika’s upward gaze suggests the possibility of looking beyond it. In this final image, Pawlikowski holds mourning and renewal in tension that even when a fatherland seems lost, the possibility of rebuilding endures.
